Returnable Bottles Cost-Benefit Analysis
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originally posted at: www.grrn.org/beverage/refillables/ecologic.html

Environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) takes LCA a step further by assigning monetary values to the environmental impacts and natural resource demands of beverage packaging systems. While the assignment of these values has many methodological limitations [CBA, pp. 17-20][LEVY, pp. 79-81], its ethical limitations probably draw the most vociferous criticism. Many critics of CBA argue that the environment is something on which you cannot place a monetary value.

Two CBA studies are considered here. The tallies of LCA results use some of the findings from a CBA study that was completed for the Austrian Ministry of the Environment in 2000 [GUA]. In 2001, the consulting firms RDC-Environment and Pira International completed a CBA study for the European Commission (EC), who intended to use the findings to set new recovery targets for the EC Directive on Packaging and Packaging Waste. This study compared 330-ml refillable glass bottles with one-way glass bottles of the same size by investigating the container manufacturing, filling, distribution, and waste management processes under the following assumptions [CBA].

* The return rate for the refillable bottles is 100 percent.
* All bottle losses occur during washing and refilling.
* The round-trip distance from the warehouse to the store is 100 Km.
* Consumers recycle their commingled bottles and other containers only at drop-off centers. Industry bears all of the costs of recycling.
* The portion of one-way bottles that are not recycled is split equally between landfilling and incineration.

The study concluded that refillable glass bottles cost less environmentally than one-way glass bottles do whenever the distance from the bottling plant to the warehouse is less than 3,500 Km with 20 trips for the refillable bottle and a 91 percent recycling rate for the one-way bottle; less than 4,200 Km with 20 trips and a 42 percent recycling rate; less than 2,300 Km with 5 trips and a 91 percent recycling rate; and less than 3,000 Km with 5 trips and a 42 percent recycling rate. The RDC-Pira study also attempted a similar comparison for PET bottles, but it apparently omitted the costs of washing bottles.